April 15, 2010

How Soccer is Won and Lost: Following on from Jonathan Wilson's excellent column The Question (previously), Zonal Marking illustrates and explains how a soccer match is won and lost, often with same-day analysis and emphasis on individual players. Of special note: their list of the 20 teams of the decade is ranked by tactical innovation and interest, although it finds time to include the usual suspects; and ten ways tactics changed in the 2000s (via MetaFilter).

posted by rcade to soccer at 12:23 PM - 7 comments

A brilliant quote from the comments in the Real-Barca dissection about Xavi Hernandez's abilities.

"Xavi plays in the future."

posted by Mr Bismarck at 05:14 PM on April 15, 2010

Digging through the links in the Mefi comments, I came across this. Man, and I thought baseball had some great writing. Bonus: also ties into visions of the future, keeping company with Bismarck's reference.

posted by yerfatma at 06:16 PM on April 15, 2010

That's a fantastic find fatma. Worthy of a FPP on its own.

posted by Mr Bismarck at 08:06 PM on April 15, 2010

From yerfatma's article:

You can take your pick between themit's certainly possible to find Barcelona cloying and prefer the frankness of Madrid's designs, i.e. "they're exactly the same, only Madrid are honest about it"

I believe that General Franco made the trains run on time, as well.

posted by owlhouse at 12:31 AM on April 16, 2010

I've loved the coverage of Bara, especially from the British newspapers' websites, just because the purple prose generator has been running under full steam, and it's been entirely deserved. To watch them this season has felt like an honour. Having ZM there to give heft to Pep Guardiola's tactical nous makes it feel less contrived, more real.

(and yeah, yerfatma: fantastic link.)

posted by etagloh at 02:01 AM on April 16, 2010

I think the site in general must be fantastic. They have some pull to get W.B. Yeats as a contributor. I subscribed to the RSS feed, here's hoping the Clasico article is par for the course.

posted by yerfatma at 08:42 AM on April 16, 2010

Greece #1?! They fucking ruined the European Championship that year and single-handedly moved back exciting football for years!

posted by StarFucker at 06:18 PM on April 17, 2010

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